Mini Masterpieces: Artist Malcolm Tween on His Royal Mail Star Wars Stamps
Featured

In an homage to a legacy of richly illustrated movie posters,
the 2017 Royal Mail Star Wars
stamps are tiny works of art filled with hidden treasures and
intricate details.

Yet when artist Malcolm Tween started
the top secret project digitally painting the postage-stamp
portraits of eight characters, including a few from Star Wars:
The Last Jedi, more than a year ago, he knew very little about
some of the new characters. “So when the porg turned up, that was
quite a surprise,” he says.

Beyond capturing the innocent blank eyes of Ahch-To’s indigenous
avian creatures and the craggy face of the First Order’s Supreme
Leader Snoke, Tween helped find the balance between the character
featured in each stamp and an array of ships, vignettes, and other
tiny details in their midst. Look closely, and you may even see
where he’s hidden a Jawa.

Recently, Tween sat down with StarWars.com from his studio in
Bournemouth, on the south coast of the United Kingdom, to talk
about his favorite Tatooine scrappers, the challenges of keeping
his work under wraps, and having his stamp collection approved by
the Queen.

‘Team Porg’

Tween, as a partner in the illustration studio Digital
Progression, has been designing the Royal Mail’s Star Wars
stamps since 2015, working closely with Lucasfilm and London-based
design agency Interabang. But when it came to capturing the look
and feel of the stamp series, Tween looked to legendary Star
Wars poster illustrator Drew Struzan for inspiration.

“Lucasfilm has this amazing tradition of having lots of
illustrative posters,” Tween says. “The legacy is fantastic in
Star Wars posters…all the montages and scenes and
backgrounds. So I think it’s kind of wanting to pay a little bit of
tribute to that.”

Struzan was, as it were, also tapped for a 2007 series of
American Postal Service stamps. “I mean, that’s quite a good honor
to be in the same company as Drew,” Tween says. Still, at times the
task was also daunting. “No pressure,” Tween jokes.

Beyond the storied history, Tween’s work on such a high-profile
and ultimately utilitarian series also meant his illustrations
would reach far beyond the eyes Star Wars super fans.
“Loads and loads of people have seen them,” Tween says. “You see
people putting on social media just randomly, ‘Oh, I went to the
post office today and I got Star Wars stamps!’ Or ‘I got a
letter today and it’s got a BB-8 stamp on it. How cool is that?’ So
it’s got this really broad appeal, this fantastic kind of natural
spread of the Star Wars magic to places where you wouldn’t
expect it really,” he says. “It’s this natural organic thing where
it’s just out in the wild and people are seeing them and responding
to them. It’s brilliant.”

It’s rumored that the Queen herself even looked at Tween’s work,
as part of the process of approving official currency and items
with her image emblazoned on them, he says. “So she’s probably
actually approved these Star Wars stamps. It may be the
only bit of Star Wars merchandise approved by the Queen.
I’m not sure if it’s true but that’s what I’m led to believe.”

And while there’s been no word from Buckingham Palace as to how
she feels about Ahch-To’s space puffins, Tween feels confident that
she might be a fan. “She might be, she might be,” he jokes. “I
think she’s Team Porg.”

Inspired to illustrate

Like most people working with Star Wars today, Tween
started out as a fan first. “I don’t think you can work on it
unless you’re a fan. I was six when it came out, so it was my
childhood.”

In fact, it was the galaxy far, far away that sparked his
imagination to dabble in illustration. “I was an obsessive Star
Wars fan when I was a kid. I think I actually re-drew the
entire stories of the first three films as little comic books when
I was a kid. They’re probably in a box somewhere.”

Tween later trained as a technical illustrator, honing his
patience for the painstaking art of fine detail in cut-away
illustrations of tanks, cars and rockets. “But really I wanted to
be drawing robots and spaceships and that kind of stuff.”

Tween had already worked with Lucasfilm on official
illustrations and licensing work when the Royal Mail came calling.
“They literally just phoned up and said, ‘We’ve got a top secret
project. Would you be interested in working on a new Star
Wars project that we’re not allowed to talk about yet?’ And I
didn’t even know it was for the stamps at that point.” The answer
was obviously yes.

For the latest series, Tween illustrated the wise Maz Kanata,
loyal Chewbacca, Supreme Leader Snoke, the droopy-mouth porg, and
legendary droids — C-3PO and R2-D2, as well as relative newcomers
BB-8 and K-2SO.

Each stamp is its own masterpiece, but the collection also has
to work in concert. “One of the things we definitely tried to do
was give each stamp their own kind of color space so there’s a
separation amongst the set, that each one stands out on its own
merits,” Tween says. “There’s technical reasons why we do that
also, but just visibly to make it work as a set and give that
overall balance. Everything’s tonally a little different…We try and
develop it early on in the design process so we know how to whole
set works as a whole as we’re going along. That’s really quite
important. Because it’s got to work as a set just as well as
individual stamps.”

Characters that Tween has known and loved for decades, like
Artoo and Chewie, are easier to capture in illustrated form. “You
have kind of an emotional attachment to those characters, so you
know exactly what they represent.”

But for the nefarious Snoke and the humble porg, Tween’s only
reference materials were concepts and glimpses provided from
production. “I think until you see them in the context of the film,
it’s really difficult to get an idea of what they’re going to be
like…We have some reference to work from obviously, but we don’t
have a lot,” Tween says.

For the Supreme Leader, designers knew reds would dominate the
color palette, but little else was confirmed about the character
beyond what could be gleaned from the towering hologram in The
Force Awakens. “It is a challenge, even down to the coloration
of his skin and stuff like that. Sometimes the reference we have is
unfinished renders and things like that so we haven’t got a huge
amount to go on…I don’t know how tall he is still,” Tween says.

It was important for Tween to capture Snoke’s beady eyes,
bloodshot and piercing in a wash of crimson hues. “Particularly,
the lighting and the color palette, we’re trying to portray him in
a certain way. A bit shadowy, a bit sinister. Not to scare the kids
off on the stamps, but we have to give clues that he’s probably not
on the good side of the spectrum.”

The porg color palette was influenced by the emerald greens and
gray tones of Luke Skywalker’s island refuge at the end of The
Force Awakens. “That’s the only context we have to the porg as
of now,” Tween said of imagery available at the time he created the
image.

Crouching Wookiee, hidden Jawa

Amid the intricate details of each wrinkle on Maz’s face and the
many individual hairs covering Chewbacca’s carpet-like mane, and
you might catch some Easter eggs hidden within the designs.

The logo marking them as First Class utilizes the font from the
iconic Star Wars logo.

In keeping with earlier stamps that had the mark of the Rebel
Alliance or the Empire hidden in UV-sensitive ink, the eyes of the
four droids in this series light up under the right conditions. “If
you put them under a UV torch, there’s actually stuff hidden in the
stamps,” Tween says. “So that’s pretty cool.”

Tween also had some fun with the backdrops, dropping intricate
ships into the background and, after his hopes of dedicating an
entire stamp to the Jawas were dashed, hiding one of the pint-sized
scavengers with one of their captives. “I did actually hide a Jawa
in the R2-D2 stamp. It’s quite small and I think it may have got
cropped off a bit in the final cut,” Tween says. “I managed to
sneak one in, so he’s hiding in their somewhere.”

Officials at Disney and Lucasfilm help guide the process, which
can take nearly two years from initial concept to final approved
creation.

“It’s just really exciting, because you get this stuff through
and it’s like, ‘Oh! This is new Star Wars stuff!’ There’s
very few people who have seen this stuff…and to see the process
that’s happening, you get little clues of what’s coming up.”

The actual illustrative work on each stamp takes Tween a solid
week, although a series of behind-the-scenes videos (seen
throughout this article) condense the highlights of the
step-by-step process.

It’s time consuming to paint individual strands of hair on furry
faces and perfect each tiny panel on droid’s cursed metal bodies.
“There’s always a challenge. I think you get in the zone with it.
You kind of get into a rhythm. It just takes time making sure all
the details are correct. Especially with anything technical, like
robots or spaceships, very specific things need to be
correct, so it’s just taking that time to get everything
right.”

Then there are revisions, changes, and approvals. All the while,
he stays mum to friends and family. When Tween illustrated his
first Star Wars Royal Mail series in 2015, their release
was heralded by excited friends who didn’t realize he was the
artist behind them. “It’s brilliant because they’re out in the wild
and actually when the first set got released, a lot of my friends,
they’re kind of posting all this stuff. ‘Oh my god, have you seen
the new Star Wars stamps?’ And it’s like, ‘Yup, I’ve seen
them.’”

Last year’s project was a little harder to keep from friends.
“They knew I was doing something top secret,” he says. But when
asked if it was more stamps, Tween had to try to maintain secrecy.
“I have to say no and I have to say it in a convincing way so
everyone believes it. You’ve just got to keep quiet and don’t give
any clues.” Which begs the question — will there be a 2018
collection? “I couldn’t possibly say,” Tween says. But with half a
collection already devoted to droids, he would love to see more of
the mechanical characters nab a stamp-sized spotlight, including
the boxy GNK power droid. “I think they’ve been really well
received. There are still a million characters you could choose,”
Tween says. “I’m not sure it’s popular enough to get one, but that
would be my vote. Vote for Gonk!”

Kristin Baver is a writer and all-around sci-fi nerd who
always has just one more question in an inexhaustible list of
curiosities. Sometimes she blurts out “It’s a trap!” even when it’s
not. Do you know a fan who’s most impressive? Hop on Twitter and
tell @KristinBaver all about
them!

In an homage to a legacy of richly illustrated movie posters,
the 2017 Royal Mail Star Wars
stamps are tiny works of art filled with hidden treasures and
intricate details.

Yet when artist Malcolm Tween started
the top secret project digitally painting the postage-stamp
portraits of eight characters, including a few from Star Wars:
The Last Jedi, more than a year ago, he knew very little about
some of the new characters. “So when the porg turned up, that was
quite a surprise,” he says.

Beyond capturing the innocent blank eyes of Ahch-To’s indigenous
avian creatures and the craggy face of the First Order’s Supreme
Leader Snoke, Tween helped find the balance between the character
featured in each stamp and an array of ships, vignettes, and other
tiny details in their midst. Look closely, and you may even see
where he’s hidden a Jawa.

Recently, Tween sat down with StarWars.com from his studio in
Bournemouth, on the south coast of the United Kingdom, to talk
about his favorite Tatooine scrappers, the challenges of keeping
his work under wraps, and having his stamp collection approved by
the Queen.

‘Team Porg’

Tween, as a partner in the illustration studio Digital
Progression, has been designing the Royal Mail’s Star Wars
stamps since 2015, working closely with Lucasfilm and London-based
design agency Interabang. But when it came to capturing the look
and feel of the stamp series, Tween looked to legendary Star
Wars poster illustrator Drew Struzan for inspiration.

“Lucasfilm has this amazing tradition of having lots of
illustrative posters,” Tween says. “The legacy is fantastic in
Star Wars posters…all the montages and scenes and
backgrounds. So I think it’s kind of wanting to pay a little bit of
tribute to that.”

Struzan was, as it were, also tapped for a 2007 series of
American Postal Service stamps. “I mean, that’s quite a good honor
to be in the same company as Drew,” Tween says. Still, at times the
task was also daunting. “No pressure,” Tween jokes.

Beyond the storied history, Tween’s work on such a high-profile
and ultimately utilitarian series also meant his illustrations
would reach far beyond the eyes Star Wars super fans.
“Loads and loads of people have seen them,” Tween says. “You see
people putting on social media just randomly, ‘Oh, I went to the
post office today and I got Star Wars stamps!’ Or ‘I got a
letter today and it’s got a BB-8 stamp on it. How cool is that?’ So
it’s got this really broad appeal, this fantastic kind of natural
spread of the Star Wars magic to places where you wouldn’t
expect it really,” he says. “It’s this natural organic thing where
it’s just out in the wild and people are seeing them and responding
to them. It’s brilliant.”

It’s rumored that the Queen herself even looked at Tween’s work,
as part of the process of approving official currency and items
with her image emblazoned on them, he says. “So she’s probably
actually approved these Star Wars stamps. It may be the
only bit of Star Wars merchandise approved by the Queen.
I’m not sure if it’s true but that’s what I’m led to believe.”

And while there’s been no word from Buckingham Palace as to how
she feels about Ahch-To’s space puffins, Tween feels confident that
she might be a fan. “She might be, she might be,” he jokes. “I
think she’s Team Porg.”

Inspired to illustrate

Like most people working with Star Wars today, Tween
started out as a fan first. “I don’t think you can work on it
unless you’re a fan. I was six when it came out, so it was my
childhood.”

In fact, it was the galaxy far, far away that sparked his
imagination to dabble in illustration. “I was an obsessive Star
Wars fan when I was a kid. I think I actually re-drew the
entire stories of the first three films as little comic books when
I was a kid. They’re probably in a box somewhere.”

Tween later trained as a technical illustrator, honing his
patience for the painstaking art of fine detail in cut-away
illustrations of tanks, cars and rockets. “But really I wanted to
be drawing robots and spaceships and that kind of stuff.”

Tween had already worked with Lucasfilm on official
illustrations and licensing work when the Royal Mail came calling.
“They literally just phoned up and said, ‘We’ve got a top secret
project. Would you be interested in working on a new Star
Wars project that we’re not allowed to talk about yet?’ And I
didn’t even know it was for the stamps at that point.” The answer
was obviously yes.

For the latest series, Tween illustrated the wise Maz Kanata,
loyal Chewbacca, Supreme Leader Snoke, the droopy-mouth porg, and
legendary droids — C-3PO and R2-D2, as well as relative newcomers
BB-8 and K-2SO.

Each stamp is its own masterpiece, but the collection also has
to work in concert. “One of the things we definitely tried to do
was give each stamp their own kind of color space so there’s a
separation amongst the set, that each one stands out on its own
merits,” Tween says. “There’s technical reasons why we do that
also, but just visibly to make it work as a set and give that
overall balance. Everything’s tonally a little different…We try and
develop it early on in the design process so we know how to whole
set works as a whole as we’re going along. That’s really quite
important. Because it’s got to work as a set just as well as
individual stamps.”

Characters that Tween has known and loved for decades, like
Artoo and Chewie, are easier to capture in illustrated form. “You
have kind of an emotional attachment to those characters, so you
know exactly what they represent.”

But for the nefarious Snoke and the humble porg, Tween’s only
reference materials were concepts and glimpses provided from
production. “I think until you see them in the context of the film,
it’s really difficult to get an idea of what they’re going to be
like…We have some reference to work from obviously, but we don’t
have a lot,” Tween says.

For the Supreme Leader, designers knew reds would dominate the
color palette, but little else was confirmed about the character
beyond what could be gleaned from the towering hologram in The
Force Awakens. “It is a challenge, even down to the coloration
of his skin and stuff like that. Sometimes the reference we have is
unfinished renders and things like that so we haven’t got a huge
amount to go on…I don’t know how tall he is still,” Tween says.

It was important for Tween to capture Snoke’s beady eyes,
bloodshot and piercing in a wash of crimson hues. “Particularly,
the lighting and the color palette, we’re trying to portray him in
a certain way. A bit shadowy, a bit sinister. Not to scare the kids
off on the stamps, but we have to give clues that he’s probably not
on the good side of the spectrum.”

The porg color palette was influenced by the emerald greens and
gray tones of Luke Skywalker’s island refuge at the end of The
Force Awakens. “That’s the only context we have to the porg as
of now,” Tween said of imagery available at the time he created the
image.

Crouching Wookiee, hidden Jawa

Amid the intricate details of each wrinkle on Maz’s face and the
many individual hairs covering Chewbacca’s carpet-like mane, and
you might catch some Easter eggs hidden within the designs.

The logo marking them as First Class utilizes the font from the
iconic Star Wars logo.

In keeping with earlier stamps that had the mark of the Rebel
Alliance or the Empire hidden in UV-sensitive ink, the eyes of the
four droids in this series light up under the right conditions. “If
you put them under a UV torch, there’s actually stuff hidden in the
stamps,” Tween says. “So that’s pretty cool.”

Tween also had some fun with the backdrops, dropping intricate
ships into the background and, after his hopes of dedicating an
entire stamp to the Jawas were dashed, hiding one of the pint-sized
scavengers with one of their captives. “I did actually hide a Jawa
in the R2-D2 stamp. It’s quite small and I think it may have got
cropped off a bit in the final cut,” Tween says. “I managed to
sneak one in, so he’s hiding in their somewhere.”

Officials at Disney and Lucasfilm help guide the process, which
can take nearly two years from initial concept to final approved
creation.

“It’s just really exciting, because you get this stuff through
and it’s like, ‘Oh! This is new Star Wars stuff!’ There’s
very few people who have seen this stuff…and to see the process
that’s happening, you get little clues of what’s coming up.”

The actual illustrative work on each stamp takes Tween a solid
week, although a series of behind-the-scenes videos (seen
throughout this article) condense the highlights of the
step-by-step process.

It’s time consuming to paint individual strands of hair on furry
faces and perfect each tiny panel on droid’s cursed metal bodies.
“There’s always a challenge. I think you get in the zone with it.
You kind of get into a rhythm. It just takes time making sure all
the details are correct. Especially with anything technical, like
robots or spaceships, very specific things need to be
correct, so it’s just taking that time to get everything
right.”

Then there are revisions, changes, and approvals. All the while,
he stays mum to friends and family. When Tween illustrated his
first Star Wars Royal Mail series in 2015, their release
was heralded by excited friends who didn’t realize he was the
artist behind them. “It’s brilliant because they’re out in the wild
and actually when the first set got released, a lot of my friends,
they’re kind of posting all this stuff. ‘Oh my god, have you seen
the new Star Wars stamps?’ And it’s like, ‘Yup, I’ve seen
them.’”

Last year’s project was a little harder to keep from friends.
“They knew I was doing something top secret,” he says. But when
asked if it was more stamps, Tween had to try to maintain secrecy.
“I have to say no and I have to say it in a convincing way so
everyone believes it. You’ve just got to keep quiet and don’t give
any clues.” Which begs the question — will there be a 2018
collection? “I couldn’t possibly say,” Tween says. But with half a
collection already devoted to droids, he would love to see more of
the mechanical characters nab a stamp-sized spotlight, including
the boxy GNK power droid. “I think they’ve been really well
received. There are still a million characters you could choose,”
Tween says. “I’m not sure it’s popular enough to get one, but that
would be my vote. Vote for Gonk!”

Kristin Baver is a writer and all-around sci-fi nerd who
always has just one more question in an inexhaustible list of
curiosities. Sometimes she blurts out “It’s a trap!” even when it’s
not. Do you know a fan who’s most impressive? Hop on Twitter and
tell @KristinBaver all about
them!